Shyness is inherently painful; introversion is not.

I am rarely bored alone; I am often bored in groups and crowds.

— Laurie Helgoe

“Events like this don't give me the sense of oneness others seem to enjoy; it's always been private occasions that make me feel connected…

— Susan Cain

“We have an assumption here in America that the kind thing to do is to be “friendly,” which means being extroverted, even intrusive. The…

— Laurie Helgoe

“Jacob opened the refrigerator and stared into it vacantly, with the false purposefulness that lingers for a few moments when a person of a…

— Caleb Crain

“introverts prefer to work independently, and solitude can be a catalyst to innovation. As the influential psychologist Hans Eysenck once observed, introversion “concentrates the…

— Susan Cain

Writing is a tribute to solitude. It is choosing introversion over extroversion, lonely hours/days/weeks/years over fun and sociability.

— Elif Safak

“Because extroversion lines up so well with American values, we introverts often deprive ourselves of what we most enjoy and thrive on. So, for…

— Laurie Helgoe

“I'd rather cut off my own balls with blunt bacon scissors than host a dinner party.”

— Derren Brown

Perhaps what I do not manage to operate rapidly enough is the passage between the outside and the inside.

— Helene Cixous

“Because loners are born everywhere, we end up living everywhere. We do not, have not, tended to single ourselves out as special, elite, requiring…

— Anneli Rufus

“We don't usually wish we were invisible unless, for some extreme reason, we were noticed first.”

— Joyce Rachelle

His retreat into himself is not a final renunciation of the world, but a search for quietude, where alone it is possible for him…

— Carl Jung

[On Jung's theory of psychological types:] My mother, Katharine C. Briggs, introduced it into our family and made it a part of our lives.…

— Isabel Briggs Myers

The young men were born with knives in their brain, a tendency to introversion, self-dissection, anatomizing of motives.

— Ralph Waldo Emerson

Whatever kind of introvert you are, some people will find you 'too much' in some ways and 'not enough' in others.

— Laurie Helgoe